Rachel Chinouriri embraces her party girl past on ‘I Think I Spoke Too Soon’: “I don’t have to demonise that experience”

Rachel Chinouriri is a big party girl – or at least she thought she was. In times past, she loved going out and getting on the sauce, ignoring the cloud of anxiety that would loom over her the morning after. “I’d go on loops of drinking from a stressed-out or traumatic place, being like, ‘This is really fun’, and then the next day being like, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have done that’,” she tells NME with a smile. Relaxed in her London flat, she leans into a teal blue couch, plants and books filling the frame behind her as she plays with her long, sleek black hair. “I couldn’t seem to get myself out of that loop.” READ MORE: Rachel Chinouriri – ‘I Think I Spoke Too Soon’ review: a glittering comedown on the dancefloor When she began to interrogate that pattern, she realised she needed to do some soul-searching and ask herself some big questions. Among them, what was she trying to avoid through drinking and partying – losing friends? Not being popular? “Am I scared of the person I am?” she remembers wondering. It was that period of self-inspection that sparked the story of her second album, ‘I Think I Spoke Too Soon’, on which she untangles that party girl identity and realises what was behin...